


Snow

by liketreesinnovember



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: F/M, Forced Marriage, Future Fic, Past Underage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-25
Updated: 2020-04-25
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:01:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23841172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liketreesinnovember/pseuds/liketreesinnovember
Summary: He does not know how to tell her what he wants to say. It would have been easier if she had hated him, easier even to see the revulsion in her eyes which he has come so often to expect. It’s her kindness which cuts him, after everything that they’ve been through, after everything that he’s done.
Relationships: Tyrion Lannister/Sansa Stark
Comments: 7
Kudos: 107





	Snow

The years have done nothing to make his scarred face any prettier, but there is something different about him, Sansa can see it in his eyes. When she was in King’s Landing she could never read what was behind those strange eyes, but now she sees so much there that she never did before.

“I want you to know, Sansa, that I’ve never born you any ill will,” Tyrion says. And he means it, she can tell. “And I will not hold it against you should you wish to end our marriage.”

He does not say what it is that he wishes, and Sansa wonders if he’s heard the rumors that have been spoken in King’s Landing and even on the lips of her own bannermen. They say she is a ruined woman, an adulteress, although in truth her marriage was hardly enough of a union that anyone could hold it against her to seek comfort in the arms of another man. She had been a child when she had wed, and Tyrion had been in Essos in the time that she had become a woman.

“Do you truly wish to be rid of me, then, husband?” she asks.

“I wish for an end to farce,” he says, stiffly. “It would be cruel to keep you tied to this marriage any longer.”

He leaves before she can say anything in response.

“I have spoken with the high septon,” he tells her when he comes to her in the godswood. “The annulment will be easy enough, after which you should choose a husband from among your bannermen, for the sake of appearances if nothing else. And if you cannot love him, choose one who you do not loathe, at least.”

“I have never loathed you, Tyrion,” she says. Her use of his name surprises him. Not my lord, not the Imp or even Lannister, but Tyrion.

“Perhaps you should have,” is all he says. He feels uncomfortable in this place. In the far north they believe that the old gods can see through the faces of the trees. Tyrion has never put much stake in gods, whether they be of north or south, yet still he feels cold.

Sansa, on the other hand, stands tall before the weirwood, snow crusting on her furs and in her hair.

He does not know how to tell her what he wants to say. It would have been easier if she had hated him, easier even to see the revulsion in her eyes which he has come so often to expect. It’s her kindness which cuts him, after everything that they’ve been through, after everything that he’s done. 

He clears his throat. “You deserve better -”

“We both did.”

“Do you despise me, Sansa?” he asks one day, as she sits by the window in the library, watching the snow fall as she finishes her stitches.

Tyrion is buried beneath his furs in a chair by the fire (he never can abide the cold), the cracked leather tome that he’s been reading forgotten in his lap. She wonders how long he has been looking at her. “Do you regret not seeking the annulment? I have never asked you -”

“It was my choice,” she says, simply. And that’s all, really. They have never talked about it further, and perhaps that is strange, but it has always been enough. But now he looks at her as if waiting for her to say something, and she feels suddenly angry.

“Tyrion,” she finds herself saying, her voice harsher than she’d meant it to be. “Do you really think so little of me, that I would remain with you, here, had I not wished it? Perhaps one day you will realize that you are not the monster you profess to be, and I your captive maiden.”

He looks at her, dumbfounded, red-faced and ashamed. Finally he speaks, his voice quiet. “No, I could never think poorly of you.” He looks like a chastened child. “Forgive me, my lady.”

One day, perhaps Sansa thinks, there will be more for them to say on the subject, but it is not the time just yet. Perhaps when the snow melts it will be.

“Must you always be so deprecating?” Sansa says, not looking up from her knitting.

Tyrion puts down the book he is reading, looks at her. “What would I have if I was not?” he asks, in that sarcastic tone of his. “My dashingly handsome appearance?”

“Well,” Sansa says, her fingers continuing their movements. “You are intelligent. And kind, when you try to be. And you have the oddest eyes I have ever seen.”

“I don’t think that’s a compliment.”

“Are you suggesting that I am being unkind, my lord?”

“Never, my lady,” Tyrion says, grinning.

“I take it all back,” Sansa says, laughing. “You are a very wicked man, my lord husband.”

“Now that I will take as the highest of praise.”

“This is hardly the worst of the snowfall,” Sansa says as she watches it pile outside the window of the library.

Tyrion is curled up beneath his furs in a chair by the fire, perusing a large tome bound in cracked leather. He looks up to stare curiously at his wife, outlined in cold sunlight, as she stares out into the courtyard.

“I wish it would be, and be done with it,” he says grumpily.

The cold has not been kind to him, Sansa knows, although she herself takes a kind of perverse pleasure in it.

“I have been a poor wife to you,” she says.

“Considering that I have been a poorer husband, I think it hardly worth mentioning.”

“I’m sorry,” she tells him, and she is. Sorry that she could not have loved him better. Sorry for the child that she had been, no more capable of being a wife than he was of being a knight.

“It should not have been required of you,” Tyrion says.

“No,” she agrees. “The Lannisters forced me to marry my enemy. They took a scared girl and thought they could make her theirs, but they were wrong.”

Tyrion says nothing and hides his face in his book. Sansa wonders if he misses his family, if he feels the same dull ache that she feels when she thinks about her brothers and sister, and her lady mother and her lord father.

Jaime Lannister had been beheaded on the steps of the sept of Baelor with the sword that Sansa recognized had been Joffrey’s, the sword that had once been her father’s. She had seen Tyrion in the crowd that day, but she had not been able to read his expression, although since then she has become adept at understanding his silences, his closed looks and defensive witticisms.

“I would not hold it against you if you wished - “

“Tyrion,” she says, in a tone that suggests that he stop avoiding her gaze. She knows what he is going to say, and she is so tired. Tired of him avoiding, apologizing. 

He looks up at her, then, finally. “Tyrion,” she continues, “The man I know who has been my companion for the past few months, the man who is helping me rebuild Winterfell and restore the North, that man is not my enemy.”

She gets to know her husband in the dark, her hands in his hair and his mouth warm against hers, the rough, scarred flesh of his upper lip where he was cut. The wound runs the length of his face, across the ruin of his nose, and is tender to her touch (he flinches away from her fingers). He has other scars, an arrow wound where his right arm meets the shoulder. She knows where and how to touch him to make him moan; kiss him on the left side of the neck, along the jawline, just below the ear, below his ribcage, down below his belly button and along the line of short, fine hairs that lead to the coarse curls between his legs.

He shivers from the cold but he stays away from the warmth of the fire. It’s the light he fears, Sansa knows. He is afraid of the dark, too, but he doesn’t fear it as much. He has always chosen the lesser fear, the lesser evil, although he will pretend otherwise. A proud lion still, even here, buried underneath the snow, roaring scared at shadows in the dark. Perhaps it’s his fear that makes her feel brave. Slowly she reaches out her hand, and pulls him with her into the light.


End file.
